Hotel Promotes Safe Sex For FrogsFrogs in Edinburgh, Scotland, now have a waterside hotel that they can visit to mate with other frogs. An environmental group opened the hotel as part of a campaign to get more people involved in volunteering. Host Liane Hansen speaks with the Scottish coordinator of the organization, Robert Henderson, about the hotel.

Paparazzi surround the hotel on opening day.
Mark Jackson/Courtesy of Community Service Volunteers
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Mark Jackson/Courtesy of Community Service Volunteers

Paparazzi surround the hotel on opening day.

Mark Jackson/Courtesy of Community Service Volunteers

Amphibians have a new place to hook up in Edinburgh, Scotland: The Frog Hotel.

The hotel, conceived by Community Service Volunteers' Action Earth campaign, opened about two weeks ago to provide a safe place for frogs to mate.

"[Frogs] are slowly coming out of hibernation, and the first thing they do is they start hanging out around water and preparing for the mating season," Robert Henderson, Scottish coordinator of the organization, tells host Liane Hansen. "Unfortunately, this makes them very vulnerable to predators, and what they really need is some safe shelter to keep their numbers up."

Henderson says the hotel looks like an underground beehive.

"The first thing that the frog will come to is the compost café, and this is an area where it's full of bugs and bees," he says. "Then there's a little ramp that takes them upstairs to what would probably be termed the sleeping area, and there is a place where frogs can meet and greet other frogs."

There are no revolving beds or heart-shaped Jacuzzis, he assures Hansen, and Barry White isn't played all night long.

"It's much more like the Bates hotel in Psycho probably. But frogs like very dark spaces," he says.

Henderson says the hotel was a fun way to get a serious message across about volunteering to help the environment.

"You can get friends together, you can do something small yourself. And even in your own garden, we would encourage people to set up log piles — they've got lots of nooks and crannies that the frogs can actually hide in and stay warm and be protected."

There are no franchise opportunities with the frog hotel. Henderson says people need to just "take these ideas and run with them."